I have always felt that the best novels are actually allegorical novels, or in other words, all excellent novels have the nature of allegory. The reason why allegorical novels are great is that they are above the trivialities of daily life, but they are full of exquisite ideas and exquisite details. They use concrete representations to interpret abstractions and tell the subtleties of human nature and the eternal laws of all things. Its ultimate direction should be religion and philosophy, so it is not outdated.
Roald Dahl's "The Witches" is such a fable novel, although many people often read it as a fairy tale.
The novel unfolds from the perspective of a little boy. The boy's parents are Norwegians living in the UK. When they took him back to Norway for vacation, they both died in a car accident, and his grandmother took over to raise him.
This history is very much like the autobiography of Roald Dahl, because his parents are Norwegian.
Since the little boy was taken over by his grandmother, his painting style has changed dramatically.
Grandma has been giving him a long lecture on how to identify witches in the crowd. For example, witches have large pink shell-shaped nostrils and drool light blue; they usually wear wigs and hats for They cover up their bald spots and the itchy and ulcerated red spots on their heads, wear gloves to hide their long sharp nails, and wear stockings and square-toed high heels to hide their feet without toenails; they have scary wrinkled faces, but they wear them every day. Use a beautiful mask to cover it up, and the mask is so seamless that people can't even tell it's a mask, etc.
Their only goal in life is to eat all the children or turn them into mice.
In short, it sounds horrifying to think about it. Even readers find this grandma really annoying. Why would she tell such boring and sadistic things to a child who has just lost his parents? And her tone is always so calm, weird, paranoid, and unquestionable, as if she is a saint who knows all the secrets. The most unbearable thing is that she likes to smoke a cigar while talking and point with her cane from time to time.
This grandma is very different from the warm and kind image we imagined. She does not look like a grandma at all. It even makes people doubt that maybe she is a witch - otherwise, why is she so familiar with witches?
Although the little boy did not think that his grandmother was a witch like the reader, he instinctively questioned everything she said and felt that there were no witches in the world, and even if there were, they could not be what she said. Grandma is just talking nonsense.
Until one day, the grandma took the little boy to live in a luxury hotel in London. The little boy secretly kept two pet hamsters. In order not to be discovered by the hotel manager, he followed the little hamsters into a hotel. In the luxurious hall, behind a colonnade, I witnessed the grand gathering of the Witch King and his ministers, and then I realized that this was a witch kingdom established by a witch and her supporters. This place is full of dark despotism, authoritarian violence, conspiracy, flattery, servility and absolute obedience.
If anyone dares to disobey orders and refuse to be loyal, the Grand Witch will forcibly take "No. 86 rat poison" on her, turning her into a rat in an instant.
But they have a very high and upright brand name - the so-called "Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children". These people are all decent, gentle, well-established and well-educated ladies from the Royal Society. The Grand Witch is naturally their president. And this hotel also has a very ironic name called "Sunshine Garden".
It was only then that we discovered that what grandma said was by no means alarmist, but the truth.
My grandma has said before that children smell like dog shit, and witches will smell them out based on the smelly bubbles emitting from their bodies, but if they are not bathed often, a layer of protection will be formed on the skin. The film is generally not easy to smell.
The only thing the little boy can pray for at this time is that maybe he won't be smelled if he doesn't like taking a bath.
But in the end, something worrying happened. Just as they were about to leave after the meeting, the little boy was smelled by the witch closest to him in the back. So in that luxurious hall, in front of all the witches, he was turned into a pitiful little mouse by the Grand Witch using "No. 86 rat poison"!
Until this point, smart readers may have had some clues - it may not be a simple children's novel, but more like a fable about human beings, society, countries, and systems.
Grandma symbolizes wise men or intellectuals - those who stay awake in a cruel world. They always take it as their mission to reveal the truth and spread common sense. Cigars and canes are actually metaphors for their identities.
The little boy is ourselves trying to explore the truth of the world. "Witches eating children" symbolizes that the ruler's only purpose is to deceive and control the people, so that they will live in ignorance forever, like rats, accustomed to a dark and undignified life.
What "Car Accident" wants to tell people may be that your parents can only give you life, and you have to walk the rest of the way by yourself. And "refuse to take a bath" is more like "refuse to be brainwashed".
When the little boy turned into a mouse, he soon met another mouse who suffered the same fate as himself - the boy Bruno Jenkins.
He sneaked back to his grandma's room with Bruno Jenkins and told his grandma everything he had experienced and what he had seen and heard.
But when grandma went to negotiate with Bruno Jenkins' parents, she was rebuked by them - they didn't believe that their son would turn into a mouse. This was a great shame for them!
They were willing to believe that he could not be found temporarily just because he was playful. And warned grandma not to meddle in other people's business.
After reading this, we suddenly understand that telling the truth is not easy, but accepting the truth is even harder, because even victims and clients like Bruno Jenkins’ parents sometimes do not want to face the truth. To the truth, because to them, the face of nothingness is more important than the truth.
And Bruno Jenkins himself is unwilling to tell the truth, because he doesn’t care at all whether he is a mouse, and he seems to have experienced the benefits of being a mouse - he no longer has to go to school, and he can hide in the basket Eating bananas inside, isn’t this the happiest life?
Aren’t Bruno Jenkins and his parents just most of the people we are familiar with in life? If Bruno Jenkins represents laziness and gluttony, then his parents represent stupidity, arrogance, and vanity.
This is mediocrity, it has always been this way.
Although the boy turned into a mouse, he was not a real mouse because he still had a brain, a heart, and could talk. Therefore, he was actually a "mouse" with the body of a mouse and the mind of a human. people". This also tells us that as long as we can think, the form of the body is no longer important.
Next, the boy and his grandma made a perfect plan to try to crush the witch's conspiracy - taking advantage of their identity as "rat people", they went to the Grand Witch's room to steal "No. 86 Rat Poison". Then he took the opportunity of them having a dinner party in the "Sunshine Garden" garden to sneak into the kitchen, sprinkle the medicine into the witches' soup, and turn them into mice instantly in full view of the public, thereby exposing their conspiracy.
The grandma first hung the "rat man" boy with a woolen thread to the witch's room. The boy successfully obtained the "rat poison", and then hid him and Bruno Jenkins in a basket and used a piece of Covered with a cloth, he took it to the garden of the "Sunshine Garden" hotel and pretended to be a guest dining with the witches to assist the "rat man" boy in his actions.
Thank God! Everything went as expected, but just when the "rat man" boy sprinkled the medicine into the soup and prepared to escape, he was discovered by a fat chef. The fat chef waved the kitchen knife, raised the knife and dropped it, and the "rat man" boy's tail instantly A section was chopped off. Fortunately, he reacted quickly and got into the fat chef's trousers, so he escaped and finally returned safely.
At this time, the Grand Witch and the witches who accidentally ingested the "Rat Poison No. 86" were shrinking, growing hair, and instantly turned into a group of rats! The conspiracy was finally solved when Bruno Jenkins jumped out of the basket and told his parents what had happened to him. His parents finally believed the fact that he had turned into a mouse.
The story could actually end here, but Roald Dahl felt it was not enough, so he sent the grandma and the boy back to Norway.
This time, they discovered that the leader of the witches who controls witches all over the world actually lives in a castle in Norway! ——That was her real lair, so the castle was infested with rats.
Even if they take "No. 86 rat poison", they are just cunning witches in mouse skin, and mouse traps are of no use to them. Moreover, the head witch also has a decent identity - a benevolent baroness. Her favorite thing is to donate large amounts to charity.
What to do?
Grandma and the boy finally came up with a solution - letting cats in the castle!
Cats are actually symbols of systems and laws. Only by establishing a sound system can the rat problem be completely eliminated.
Lu Xun said in "Diary of a Madman":
In contrast, the "child" in "The Witch" has a more powerful sense. He is not the object of rescue, but He is the savior of this world, and together with his grandma, he uses courage and wisdom to finally completely destroy the evil witch world.